My Nan is in hospital.

Posted: December 16, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Matters that Matter | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

My Nan is in hospital, and is due to remain for a few more days, following a week of already having been stuck there.

She is 96, she has dementia, bronchitis, a UTI, and I’d imagine depression too considering all those combined after a week in hospital.

This year has been her greatest deterioration. This was the year she didn’t recognise me right away. And was the year she asked me if I’d seen her mother around. I hadn’t – she died before my mother was born.

She wants her mother, which is quite the thing to want at 96 years old.

I think, not just from the emotional low of wanting ‘mum’ to make everything better, but there’s also a simple, sensible logic to it.

“I’m confused and don’t know where I am – I’d better find where mother is. That’ll solve everything, as usual.” That’s a problem solving habit we grow out of, but I suppose we also cling to.

I’ve a feeling this is commonly noted by those visiting old and poorly relatives in hospital; they look so small.

She is curled up in her bed, blankets over and around her, with side-shelves full of debris from visitors and staff. Uneaten meals under heat-covers, unopened magazines of gossip and brain-teasers, sweets and fruit drinks.

I added to that some photos of my son, from his school’s photo shoot.

He looks ridiculous, but I suppose that’s in his DNA.

It made her smile and laugh, and I could see it also made her think and try to remember. She recognised him, but I think she may also have liked just seeing a cheerful little boy smiling under a mop of previously combed hair.

She was concerned about where her shoes were, so I kept pointing to them and throwing them in the air every now and then to liven up the place. She liked that too, but also asked that I put them back carefully, where she could see them.

“When I die, all my children are going to get a little bit of money.” she keeps saying, again and again, loudly. I kept having to match her volume by saying “not yet Nan, you just stay with us instead of going”, so others didn’t think I was trying to coax it out of her with a power of attorney one hand and a pen in the other.

I brought her some strawberry bon-bons, and she had one. I think it was the thrill of the day.

My mother is worried about there not being a proper care plan for her. Nan asked me, “who am I going to live with” and at first I didn’t know how to answer because I don’t know her care plan, and then I realised she’d actually forgotten that she currently lives alone, next door to my parents. She didn’t know where she lived, and was asking me.

It’s no less sad to tell you this because of who my Nan was, as that shouldn’t matter.

But I’ll tell about that sometime soon.

She should be home soon, before Christmas.

It’s seems pointless to tell you I love my Nan very much, that would be assumed by most and is true. But she loved me beyond care of danger and damage. She’d take on a bull at full charge for me.

Just a grandmother loving their grandchild I suppose.

But it’s important to remember, I feel anyway, that this is how things are, were, and will be. It’s important to remember because it’s important.

Nan was completely on my side. And now I sit at hers.

I’ll tell you about her sometime. Her name is Betty, something she was first called when she was a little girl, held by her mother and father.

Now she’s 96. But she’s still Betty.

Sam

Oh I Could Just Eat You Up

Posted: April 18, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., culture, Uncategorized, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I want to eat my wife’s legs.

It comes from a place of love, I can assure you of that, though there is also a chance some small percentage of inspiration comes from a small breakfast.

We have an agreement, you see, in which, as our hearts, lives and bank accounts have become entwined, as have our shared ownership of body parts.

Those are OUR bosoms and that is OUR foreskin, so on and so very much forth.

There are limbs and sundry which have special ownership, however, such as my ready greediness for my wife’s legs.

I’m not sure why, but as time has passed in our whirlwind of passionate going-steadiness, my mouth has passed from open mouthed awe at my wife’s physical form (along with the very decent form of being eager to involve me upon it) to closed mouthedness – with teeth bitten down and much attempted chewing upon a choice buttock.

Probably just arousal, though I feel sure there are connotations of good old cannabalistic adoration…eating the hearts of one’s enemies can only fall more pale to the good etiquette of eating that of a lover’s, whilst I am also confident it’s simple good forward thinking.

Plane crashes were an awfully ‘2016’ thing to occur, but this year might decide to replicate with me dangerously strapped in to my seat.

I can envisage plowing down, cockpit first into the scorched ground of Saharan desert, peanuts and hostesses flying every which way, before blacking out holding my wife’s hand.

Coming to, still with a hand to hold but no wife in sight, I would eventually come about to find her, and seeing this am overcome by grief and an attack of the munchies.

From then on it’s something to chew over whilst considering my future in canabalism.

Of course, this is all nonsense.

Whilst I do encounter a peculiar urge to nibble upon my wife’s legs when I stumble upon a glimpse of them, I don’t want eat my wife.

Perhaps I should simply eat a trifle more (as two trifles evidently isn’t enough…actually, please help me with my trifle habit) prior to our bath time.

This being said, I still do have a degree of autonomy of regions of my Mrs.

We’ve agreed, I get her thighs, whilst my forehead is all hers.

I want her thighs because they are too pure a specimen for her to spoil with some form of “I’m a spiritual wanderer and foot-first hippie” tattoo involving ‘swishy’ lines as if you’ve really got a David-Bowie-starry-summer-breeze on your leg…and a horsie.

Plus they’re simply a smashing pair of pegs.

And she has intentions on my forehead. Not sure why. To hang art from it at some point possibly; it is a rather large forehead and we all have a calling…even foreheads and I.

All this about eating my wife is merely how I feel regarding munching on the public, but I’m not so sure, not so sure at all, about grandmothers.

“Oh I could just eat you up” they’ll say.

And, yes, they jolly well could, but not without a fight and a retaliatory chomp.

Do you have the fortitude to beat off a granny of steadily advancing years and worryingly advancing nashers?

Whilst I’m confident of being socially comfortable with belting a granny about the nose and ears with her own handbag/Yorkshire terrier, I know all too well of chums falling to the dentures and hideously successful gumming of a starved granny who thinks they’re adorable.

Not to mention, these old women are riddled with spare teeth, meaning that they could eat you with dentures in both hands AND with the mouth.

“Ooh ain’t he lovely Doris!?”

“Oh yes Marge, but try him with gravy.”

Most unagreeable.

Personally, I’d have to view the whole encounter as a fine selection of fellow-filled grins from which to elect the most helpful to knuckle heavily before running home to my wife and urging us to eat more before babysitting any potential future grandchildren.

I truly-doodly-do write some strange things throughout my articles.

However, I’d like to remind everyone not to eat anyone and vice versa, unless you find them in a prime state for eating, just remember to wash all hands before cooking. And feet. And sundry.

And don’t forget, canibalism leads to larger larders but fewer friends…not a pleasing alliteration when realising one is a direct result of the other.

So; not chewing, but nibbling.

Sam

My Name’s Samuel Wood and I’m a Monarchist

Posted: November 6, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I suppose now I’ll need to carry a show-handkerchief and sprout a moustache for folk to tell whether they should respect me or not.

That way I’ll have two things to weep into as I think of the Queen.

I was enjoying a five pound note on Bonfire Night and came away from the experience a Monarchist.

There are only a few years left of the goodest girl, so why not be a Monarchist for the remainder?

If we were to take up republican arms and cast her out onto the Mall, I’d feel wretched.

It seems too easy to picture; the Queen dazed and confused and wondering where to make her way to now she’s without a household to come thither with a blanket and tuck her in…somewhere.

I’d have to relieve her; scoop her up in my messianic middle-class arms and take her home to meet my children. Put her in a shoe box beneath the bed where she’ll eventually die because we miss-fed her dog food.

She may be largely redundant; but it is the strict cohesion of everyone taking this redundancy too seriously that makes her too vital for the nation for us to permit her to pass away.

This being said, I also feel the rise in me of the notion that she has the will for survival as such the daughter-of-mother-nature it becomes macabre.

Butlers, maids and chauffeurs must know they are useful in their current application though also qualify too easily as eventual arrow-fodder and food source. Matter and masses; as it were.

The sensation I’m suffering in two-way tides is that of a masculine/gentleman’s urge to protect the Queen with my English manhood, and to allow her to lead me to my death in use as a barricade and elevenses’.

I’m an individual sort of chap but I’m happy to dive my head into some of that “Dear Leader” complex and feel like I’ve achieved something because I have a Queen.

I’ve got a Queen; what’ve you got?

A senate?

Pfft. Don’t make me laugh inside (I’d never denote external emotion beyond “ooh what a lovely bouquet of flowers. My house is simply desolate of posies; thank you so awfully much for standing in line today”).

Democracy is for pussies and men who don’t love their grandmother enough.

Let’s talk in terms of granite here.

At war, your senate will discuss which of each of them gains possession of the fallen’s body parts, so as to knaw upon in their final few cannibalistic moments, whilst MY Queen will be standing on the beaches; with crown askew and rabid corgi by her side in delicious anticipation of being used as a by-the-tail-club-to-be-swung, sharpening her own knuckles and daring ISIS to take another step towards her.

She’s MINE.

I’ve got a Queen.

And I’ll apply her to the affected area liberally.

Why do this? What is she good for, sir?

To become a tad more staunch, perhaps sir?

The Queen makes me stiff, not only in my upper lip, but in every appropriate body part that could do with a wee bit of starching, as well as subjugately flaccid in the single area of pride and shame and irreverence to both penile emotions.

She makes me stiff like a patriot should be; stiff for my country and stiff for my Queen.

Stiffer than a millennial knows how.

The Queen is one of those few things I’ll someday cry about, simply because…she won’t cry in return.

Much like how she wept a sturdy gallon of tears for her retired battleship; she wouldn’t do that for me and I love her for it.

I know that, deep in the belly of Buckingham and Balmoral, she will let loose a lonely droplet for a corgi and she’ll never do that in front of me; and that makes me want to blubber into my stiff moustache.

The Queen is a battleship and I adore her because she sank Nazis and kept us buoyant.

What did your congress do?

Did they gather?

I’ll tell you what the nation’s ‘MRS’ did; she continued as she was bound to.

So quietly dignified that everyone knew about it.

She would wail a piece of aristocratic pottery deep into the noggin of a petulant and “awfully presumptuous” intruder and then proceed to not understand why the nation’s papers are making such a fuss.

Don’t intrude upon my Queen.

She’s mine.

And I’ll let her loose on you if you don’t staunch up.

Come be stiff with me.

Oh well chaps. All in good spirits; I’m sure your senate and congress are a charming collection when only one gets to know them.

Here’s a scheme; how about the matinee of Comus at the Globe next Saturday?

You bribe and collect the Senate and Congress to be there for 14:30. They can each have a cushion.

I’ll bring the Queen and her throne; you fucking loser.

Queendom; bitch.